


King Henry's Christmas Carol.

by TayBartlett9000



Category: British Royalty RPF, Historical RPF, The Tudors (TV)
Genre: Adultery, Christmas, Court, Death, England - Freeform, Execution, F/M, Ghosts, King - Freeform, Marriage, Queen - Freeform, Sadness, Truth, Tudor, freedo
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-04
Updated: 2018-12-04
Packaged: 2019-09-07 04:18:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,651
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16846984
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TayBartlett9000/pseuds/TayBartlett9000
Summary: It is Christmas eve and King Henry has organised a twelve day  festival of merryment, but once  everyone else has departed, three ghosts from King Henry's past come back to haunt him. Henry will be forced to face up to what his reign as king has meant to the women in his life, even the women he proported to love.





	King Henry's Christmas Carol.

Pools of golden candle light illuminated the great hall of King Henry’s palace in Westminster as dancers, jesters  and actors attempted to please their beloved king with the entertainment that always filled his home with laughter. King Henry   had ordered a twelve day festival of merriment to rival no other and  thus far, the entertainers had exeeded even his own expectations. Henry had always loved merriment.  Merryment helped him  to  forget his troubles. Enjoyment and feasting allowed him to keep those bad memories at bay.  Frivolities aided King Henry in his quest to ensure that the  terrors that he had experienced during his long reign  remained hidden in the very darkest recesses of his mind.

The fisting had carried on for most of the day and long into the night. Now, as the hour of midnight was signified by the chiming of the  clock, the king rose from his golden throne and called a halt to the procedings. A  happy hush descended upon the crowd as the people present in the great hall turned to face their king, ready with eager ears to listen to anything their ruler had to say.

“gentlemen,” King Henry proclaimed in a booming voice that filled the hall and echoed grandly off  every decorated wall, “ladies, it has been a rather interesting day to say the least, has it not?”

 A roar of ardent approval exploded from the people who had joined him in merriment.

“I do hope that tomorrow, the blessed day of our saviour Jesus Christ’s birth, you wil again join me in a celebration to honour his good name. Can I count on your  joining me?”

Another roar of joyous approval and the King waved everyone out of the hall, bringing and end to the party that had  reduced many  to  drunken and rapturous pleasure.

 Once  every person had left the hall, including his wife queen  Katherine, Henry made his way out of the great hall  and  slowly wound through the endless coridors of Westminster palace towards his own private bed chamber.  He  did not  want dear sweet Katherine Par  in his bed this night. She wouldn’t mind. Kathrine never minded. She clung to her  virtue so tightly that sometimes not even he could tempt her into his bed. She lived for God first and his  pleasure second. That  was the basic  principle that  governed her life. Henry minded not. She wasn’t and had never been a particularly interesting person.

King Henry’s bed chamber was dark as he stepped into it. If his servants had lit candles or kindled a fire,  both had long since  dwindled. He sat on the edge of the cushen stroon bed, suddenly  feeling tired. He had to face it. King Henry was growing old. He had to admit that.  Though merriment was still very much to his liking, he  had to admit that such festivities tired him quite easily these days.

He lay back in bed, mind wandering. His room was almost bitterly cold. He wished for the fire. But he had not the  energy left to summon the servants. He would  be asleep  soon in any case. Then the cold would not matter.

Closing  his eyes and allowing his limbs to lie heavy in his grand old bed, king Henry sercummed to sleep, gladly and gratefully.

King Henry wasn’t sure how long he had been asleep, but he would remember until his dying day what woke him.

A sweet voice as of peeling bells awoke Henry from the hazey blackness of sleep. He sat up in his bed,  eyes swiveling around  his darkened bed chamber, searching for a sign. He  knew what he had heard. Henry would   know that pretty voice anywhere. But surely, he wasn’t hearing that voice outside his head? She was dead. She had been dead for years. Surely, his love would never have come back from the dead  to visit him. God’s world just didn’t work that way. Did it?

APPARENTLY,  IT DID, FOR AS A SILVER SPLINTER OF MOONLIGHT FELLL ACROSS THE ROOM, THE IMAGE OF A BEAUTIFUL woman appeared before him, raven of hair, black of eye and  heavenly beyond words.  He knew that face almost too well. Those eyes had captured his fantasy years ago and even though he had taken other wives since then, she had never seaced to  thrill his memories. His love for her hadn’t quietened.

Anne Boleyn stood before King Henry, her eyes pouring hatred and anger as she   gazed at him with an intensity that could have  shocked the bravest men. And Henry, though he liked to pretend to be, was not in any way a brave man.  

“Why have you come to me, Anne?”   he asked in a voice that trembled slightly. He looked his dead wife in the face and  watched closely for a reaction, any reaction. “Are you real?” 

“I  am real indeed, dear Henry,” Anne said in a voice sweet as honey, yet cold as ice, “I am real indeed, and I have come  to see you, to warn you. You are  greatly in  need of some sound advice, I fear.”

“Advice?” Henry asked, stupefied, “what kind of advice? What have you come  to me to warn me about?” Even as he spoke, Henry wondered what was happening and why he was seeing what looked to be the ghost of his second wife. He had consumed rather a lot of drink at the festivities. Perhaps the alcohol was addling his intellect.

Anne drifted across the room and came to sit on his bed. He felt no weight, smelled not the scent that she loved to wear. Yet she was there beside him. He could see  her in the light from the moon.   “I feel that my death has been in vein, Henry,” she said without emotion, her hand reaching out to smooth the covers of the bed she had shared with him for so long, “I fear that I died for nothing.” 

“What are you saying to me?” the king of England asked nervously.

Anne frowned. “I think you know perfectly well what I am trying to say, Henry. You killed me in a fit of passionate jealousy,  I know that now. You  thought me to be unfaithful.  You thought me to be an adulterer. I was neither. Apart from your  thoughts about me as a poor wife, you also killed me from tempestuous dislike of being blessed with another daughter. You wanted a son. I was unable to give you one, and you threw my life away, did you not? You threw my life away for the sake of your precious dynasty.” 

Henry listened, an expression  of intense pain crossing his features. He had tried to turn away from such thoughts for so long. He had regretted the death of his wife, though said death had been at his hand. He had indeed killed Anne on a whim. He knew that his people had  cared not for Anne and her wild and  hot  tempered ways. But Henry had.

“Have you nothing to say?” Anne asked in a decidedly accusatory tone, “do you not have anything to say to me?” 

Henry opened his mouth, gargled low in his throat and closed it again, lost for words. He felt the accusing eyes of his second wife upon him, and though any defense he may have given  would have been weak, he decided to offer it anyway. “I had no chice, Anne my dear,”  he said almost desperately, “the Tudor line needed a male heir. I had to devorse you. I love Elizabeth dearly but she will not be suitable as a ruler of my country.”

Anne leaned forward, ghostly face dangerously close to that of her living x husband. “And the adultery, Henry? What about that? You of all people know how much I loved you, how much I adored everything about you. I worshiped the ground you walked upon. I faught so hard to win your affection. I never would have tossed that luck aside for a fling with someone else. That is why you feel guilty. You killed me not because I was unable to give you a male heir. You killed me because you were jealous, and because you had grown bored of me. Is that not true?” Her beautiful face twisted in disgust. “I warn you, Henry, you must accept the truth of what you have done. If you do not, your god given immortal soul will be forfit. You have been warned. Have you anything to say?”   

Henry sat there in horrified silence, thinking over what she had just said to him. He liked none of what he had heard but could deny none of it. She was speaking the truth.

The ghostly figure of Anne Boleyn rose to her feet and moved away from him as if in disgust. “It seems that you are unable or at least unwilling to accept the truth for what it is, husband. If this is the case, then I have no reason to linger here any longer. I bid you good evening, and I hope that our meeting tonight does not mar your soul.”

As she disappeared, Henry  had the  sense that hoping the meeting would not mar his soul was precisely the opposite of what his contrary wife wished. 

For a few seconds, King Henry lay there in the darkness. Anne’s visit had terrified him beyond words. He knew not what to think, but alas, his troubles were not to come to an end with the dissappearence of Anne Boleyn’s ghost. 

A moment later, a light voice filled with sweetness and youth filled his ears. Taking a deep breath and looking towards the far end of the room from which Anne had appeared, he  caught sight of the wife he had sent to her grave via an   axe through the neck. 

Katherine Howard stood   poised as if preparing to fly, arms raised slightly from her sides, her long golden hair flowing down  her back, a  bright smile playing around her lips. In this  bold and youthful creature, Henry   could see the innocence that had died along with Katherine, whatever innocence had still been present within the body of that woman when she had died.

“Have you missed me, Henry?” she  asked with a tinkling laugh, unable to show her deepest feelings even then. Even as she stepped forward and stood by her husband’s side, Katherine Howard was still untamed, unconquered and strong willed to the last.

“You are looking pretty as always,   my dear Kate,” the king told her in the voice of the flatteror. Katherine had always been  susceptible to flattery and even as a  ghost she appeared to have retained that  foolish and flirtatious attitude. “I have indeed missed you.” 

“You lie, and you know it,” his pretty Kate Howard told him in a voice of vixen-like disapproval, “you killed me because of scandle. I don’t think a man like you could have  ever allowed word of  your  permiscuous wife to leak out of Westminster palace. I know this. You know this and you would do good to remember it.”

Another accusation. Henry sighed, growing angry. Anne had accused him of killing her over adultery and now Katherine had accused him of killing her to avoid scandle.  Both women were behaving in  such a shallow manner, and yet as with Anne’s  words, Henry could not deny Katherine’s.

The ghostly eyes of Kate welled with tears as he looked at her. Even in death, she was still  as pretty as a  porcilane figure, though her anguished expression and tear filled eyes seemed to be somewhat spoiling the effect.  “I loved you, Henry,” she said with impassioned urgency, “I loved you. I tried so hard to please you. I asked you only for  some semblance of freedom. I wished only for the simple freedoms that you yourself were able to endulge in.”

King Henry frowned. “What freedoms did I not let you enjoy, Kate? I gave you jewels, I gave  you riches and I gave you my palace. I could have had many women begging for the privilege of being queen, and I gave that privilege to you.”

Kate  rinkled her nose and snorted with derision.  “But I was not allowed the simple freedom of enjoying male company as you so frivolously endulged in  female company,” she told him  simply. “I believe that my actions, my afairs with the men in my life may not have been the most wise or mature to say the least, but nobody accused you of what you accused me of. You, Henry, had the freedom to bed any woman you wished, but I as your queen was  unable  to do the same. You treated me unjustly, expecting me to kneel before you and allow you to  force me into submission. You clipped my wings, Henry. I loved you for your willingnesss to allow happiness, and yet you stole mine without thought. Do you agree with what I say?”

A short pause followed. Anne had  asked Henry to be truthful about his treatment of Anne, and now Kate was asking him to come clean about his  curtailing of her freedom. Both women knew all-too well that Henry’s arrogance lead him to be unable to voice said truth, but both women knew that he was unable to deny anything of what they were saying.

Rising to her feet, Kate glared down at her x husband with hatred in her eyes. “Weak as ever are you not?” she asked quietly, “I only hope you can speak the truth to the last of your wives who wishes to talk with you.” 

Henry flinched. Who else wished to speak with him. “Is it Catherine of Aragon?” he asked? He knew Catherine of Aragon was dead, and he knew that she would have more than a few words to say to him. His first wife  had come to lothe him  and she hadn’t been shy about showing it. He groaned inwardly. He didn’t fancy a chat with his first wife,   irritatingly religious to the last.

Kate shook her head, a  nasty smile  replacing that sweet one he knew so well. “No, dear husband of mine. Jane Seymor. It is she who  wishes to speak to you. I shall go and allow her to step forth into this room. Perhaps you shall be able to unburden your heavily stained soul to Jane. I bid you goodnight.”

And Henry was left on his own again. 

Jane Seymour. Even that name brought tears to his eyes. His most beloved wife, who had born him his beautiful son wished to speak to him from beyond her tragic grave. His hands trembled as they rested upon his sheets. He desired more than anything to see his beautiful Jane again. She at least would have something of kindness to say to him. He could assure himself of that. 

“Henry, sweet Henry are you here? Can you hear me?” 

That voice brought tears to King Henry’s eyes as he surveyed the fraile and delicate figure of his golden haired Jane standing at the far end of his bed chamber. Her eyes, round with passion, watched him closely as she moved towards him. Her hands were stretched out in front of her pleadingly   as if she was begging the lord to  grant her courage.

“Jane!” Henry breathed, “oh Jane. How glad I am to see you again at last. I thought that I would only see you again once I reached heaven myself. But you are here  before me, and how glad I am. Indeed, this is the finest Christmas gift I ever would have  received.  Come closer my dear, that I may see your face.”

But the ghostly spector of Jane Seymour didn’t move. She stood facing her husband across the room, unwilling to take a step closer. The eyes that Henry loved so much held a reproachful expression as she stood in silence.

“Will you not speak to me my dear?” King  Henry asked in a strangely trembulous voice, “I ask you to speak. I  wish more than anything to hear your angelic voice again.” 

But still, Jane refused to answer.

 “What is wrong, my dear Jane?” he asked desperately, “please tell me what is wrong.” 

“I thought that I knew you, Henry,” Jane said eventually in  a voice as of icey gusts of wind, “I thought I knew you. I thought I knew you to be kind and considerate. But Death has opened my eyes to the truth. I know now what you are and always have been.”

Henry sat helplessly,  hands curled  into fists as he contemplated the ghostly figure of the only wife he ever loved entirely. He didn’t understand Jane’s anger. He hadn’t ever saught to cause her harm. He had treated her like the queen she was. Jane had been his favourite wife and he had told her so, before and after she had given birth to young Edward. He had known how much he had and still did adore her. Surely, she could not feel any anger towards him.

“Do not say such things to me, Jane my dear. I loved you and always will love you. With you I was kind. To you I was considerate. You know this to be true.” 

Jane’s ghost shook her head and her next words drove knives of misery into King Henry’s heart. “I do not,” she told him calmly, “I know you only to be a rash and undisciplined man who throws life away when said life does not meet your expectations. I guess that if I too was unable to produce a male heir, you would have thrown my own precious life away as well. I know this to be true. You threw one life away because that life gave you only a girl. You threw the second life away because she dared to live a life of her own. I never wished to believe you to be as callace as you have proved yourself to be. But death has shown me who you really are.” Now, Jane came closer, eyes boring into those of her living  husband. “You   are a corrupt king, husband. You ruled with a fist of iron and treated those you proported to love worse than anyone else, even the subjects who you  killed  out of  shere petulance. You are a disgrace. You killed people who meant something to you. You had no  regard for life and as a result, God is displeased with you.”

Henry sat up a little further in bed, staring at Jane in utter disbelief. “What are you saying?” he asked, wide eyed and suddenly frightened, “what do you mean when you say that god is displeased with me? He sent me an heir through the only woman I ever loved. How can that  be a  sign of God’s displeasure?”

Jane’s eyes were cold as she said, “perhaps God was offering you a chance to rdeme yourself.  Perhaps his sending you an heir was his way of showing you forgiveness for slaughtering one of his children. You killed Anne Boleyn when she gave you a loving daughter. But I cannot speak for God. His ways are unknown to all but himself, but let me tell you, God is displeased with anybody who holds no regard for life. You are one of these men I believe. Your soul is stained with the blood of innocent people. And they died in the interest of personal gain. That is all. Have you anything to say?”

Henry remained silent. He could think of nothing to say. Jane was right. He knew she was right, but pride forbade him to say it.

Jane’s eyes narrowed. “Nothing to say?” she asked, voice growing colder with every silible uttered. Her frown deepened. “I ask you now to speak the truth and rid your soul  of the sins and memories you carry around with you. You may be forgiven if you confess what you have done.”

But still, Henry could not speak.

“I can see that not even I can persuade you to relieve your burdened mind,” Jane said coldly,”I leave you now.”

That made Henry start to speak. “No, Jane,” he said in desperation, “please d not leave me. Do not. I do not think I could  bare you leaving me again so soon.”

Jane regarded him sadly before turning away. “Alas,” she said quietly, “I feel that I must, in fact. I do hope you repent soon, Henry. Your time on this Earth grows short. You must do your best to do right by those who you have swarn to love and protect, or you will not be forgiven. What you have done will certainly not be forgiven easily. But as I have said, I shall leave you now. Think over what I have said, Henry.”

And she too vanished into nothingness, leaving a distraught Henry Tudor behind.  

Henry lay on his bed, mind racing, heart pounding and tears sliding down his face. Jane had forsaken him. Anne  had tormented him and Katherine had poured spiteful words  on his head. Even in death, his wives had not seen it in their hearts to forgive him. He knew not why, he had forgiven them. He had forgiven Jane for dying on him. He had forgiven Katherine for her flightiness  of spirit and he had forgiven Anne for her adulterous ways. Why had they been unwilling to forgive him? He supposed he could do little about this. Perhaps when he woke again, the ghostly spectors  of Anne, Katherine and his beloved Jane would be as phantoms sent to him  during  a vivid dream. He hoped so. There was nothing else King Henry could do but hope that everything that had taken place tonight had been an awful dream. ‘Oh God,’ he thought, ‘please let it have been a dream.


End file.
